8vo. ff. [4], 134 [i.e. 136], [2], [1] (blank) including preliminary blank, errata leaf on R9r, and title page and terminal leaf (R10v) with Aldine printer’s mark. Register and colophon on R9v.Signatures: *⁴ A-Q⁸ R¹⁰. Vellum, remnants of links. Manuscript title on spine, edge, and front cover board. Back of cover with manuscript date “MDCCCLXXII.” Plate and signature of Russell Gray dated May 1st, 1872. Other ex libris from a presbyterium, and partly erased signature on title page and endpaper.

The first Muret edition of Catullus, printing in its commentary to 17:6 (p. 23) an illustrative fragment from the tragedy Armorum Judicium by the early Roman playwright Pacuvius, long suspected of being another Muret forgery–which again appears to have victimized Scaliger, who quoted it in the revised second edition of his own Catullus (1600). But while Muret had in fact altered the verse slightly (from ‘Pro imperio salisubsulus si nostro excubet’ to ‘Pro imperio sic salisubsulus vostro excubet’), he did not wholly invent it: his direct source was the 1521 edition of Catullus prepared by Alexandro Gaurini, fol. 17v (see Bib# 7596558 in this collection). Scaliger, however, followed Muret’s misleading version, which Isaac Vossius denounced as a forgery in 1684, marvelling that Scaliger had been bitten again by Muret, from the grave. The charge was repeated by J. B. Mencke (De charlataneria eruditorum, Leipzig, 1715) and from Mencke by Octave Delepierre (Supercheries littéraires, London, 1872, pp. 48–49), but disputed by the 19th-century Catullus editors Orioli and Näke: see Robinson Ellis’s Catullus commentary (Oxford, 1889, pp. 66–68). H. M. Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, 1501-1600, in Cambridge Libraries. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1967, C1145. For another copy of this edition in the Bibliotheca Fictiva collection, see Bib# 7596570.

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